Authorities closed Burlington International Airport for several hours Sunday to respond to an unspecified threat reported aboard an inbound flight.
Roughly 20 minutes before the United Airlines flight was scheduled to land at 4:30 p.m., its crew reported the threat to air traffic control, according to Nicolas Longo, the airport’s director of aviation. The plane was directed to an area away from the terminal and searched, but nothing suspicious was found, Longo said at a press conference Sunday night at the airport.
None of the approximately 65 passengers aboard the Embraer 175 traveling from Newark Liberty International Airport were injured during the event, Longo said.
“This investigation is ongoing and, at this time, there’s no reason to believe that this is anything but an isolated incident,” Longo said.
According to acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is taking the lead in the investigation because the incident began in federal airspace.
Neither Longo nor Murad described the nature of the threat.
“I’m not going to confirm the specifics of it,” Murad said at the press conference when asked by a reporter whether it had been a bomb threat. “But we know that the Vermont State Police (explosive ordnance disposal team) came, and we took the sorts of procedures that we take when we involve the Vermont State Police Bomb Squad.”
One passenger aboard the plane, Vermont Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D-Chittenden South, said officials told passengers that a note had been found on the plane saying there was an explosive device aboard.
According to Baruth, it was not immediately clear to passengers on the flight that it was the focus of the law enforcement activity taking place at the airport. That changed roughly an hour and a half after the plane landed and officials with bomb-sniffing dogs boarded the plane, which had been parked on the tarmac.
Passengers were eventually allowed to deboard the plane and were directed to a hangar until the security assessment was complete, according to Baruth. He said baggage and personal belongings became available around 8:10 p.m.
Baruth said he thought officials had handled the situation well.
“I thought they did a great job,” he said. “It’s obviously something they can’t blow off. They have to treat it as an imminent threat — and they did.”